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INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  THE 
METROPOLIS 

By  John  Collier 

f] 

Educational  Secretary,  People's  Institute,  New  York 

49 

Gossip  has  it  that  a  well-known  authority  on  trade 
instruction  was  brought  to  New  York  City  not  long 
ago  and  was  asked  to  prepare  a  report  on  the  indus¬ 
trial  schools  of  the  Board  of  Education,  and  that  he 
prepared  an  essay  devoted  to  general  principles  and 
the  comparative  experience  of  the  country  on  this  sub¬ 
ject.  When  asked  (this  is  still  gossip)  why  he  had 
not  reported  on  the  industrial  schools  of  New  York 
City,  he  replied  that  there  were  not  enough  to  be 
worth  considering. 

We  might  supplement  this  remark  with  a  paragraph 
from  the  current  report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Even¬ 
ing  Trade  Schools  of  New  York  City:  “Even  in  New 
York  City  we  have  not  at  this  time  any  real  method 
of  knowing  exactly  what  is  being  done  in  industrial 
education;  one  who  is  seeking  to  learn  a  particular 
trade  would  scarcely  know  where  to  go.” 

Yet  New  York  is  the  leading  manufacturing  center 
of  America  and  the  leading  commercial  center  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  central  dynamo  and  the  great  market¬ 
place  of  a  civilization  which  knows  that  it  is  built 
on  an  economic  foundation.  New  York  is  spending 
$35,000,000  a  year  on  its  public  schools.  How  much 
of  this  sum,  the  interest  on  $700,000,000,  is  being  ef¬ 
fectively  devoted  to  the  needs  of  this  age,  and  how 
much  to  the  needs  of  an  earlier  age  in  whose  tradi¬ 
tion  the  school  still  lives? 

One  might  venture  to  add,  that  every  city  in  Amer¬ 
ica  needs  to  ask  the  same  question.  American  educa¬ 
tion  is  still  preponderantly  scholastic,  made  of  a  sort 
of  telescoping  series  of  influences  reaching  from  the 
medieval  scholastic  down  through  the  English  school 


Presented  at  meeting  of  Efficiency  Society  at  Boston,  December  30,  1912. 


for  gentlemen  and  culminating  in  the  sporadic  spe¬ 
cialized  trade  school  enthusiasms  of  our  own  country 
for  sixty  years  past.  Integration  there  has  never  been, 
and  one  can  still  trace  the  several  metaphysical  the¬ 
ories,  the  several  theories  of  the  nature  of  life  and  of 
social  organization,  laid  beside  one  another  in  our 
school  system  like  geological  evidences  in  some  up- 
heaved  stratum  of  the  ancient  earth.  Things  are  in¬ 
jected  into  our  school  systems;  things  are  tacked  on 
to  the  outside  of  our  school  systems  in  a  way  to 
cause  perpetual  disturbance;  but  as  for  a  true  internal 
evolution  in  accord  with  the  principles  of  life  and  so¬ 
ciety,  it  scarcely  takes  place  more  than  it  would  in  a 
tangle  of  geological  strata. 

Perhaps  of  all  the  impressions  gained  from  New 
York  City  which  may  be  of  value  to  the  other  cities 
of  America,  this  is  the  most  important,  because  it 
applies  in  varying  degree  to  all  of  them. 

Now  for  the  facts  and  their  interpretation,  both  of 
which  will  be  brief.  When  I  undertook  to  prepare 
this  paper  the  latest  annual  report  of  the  New  York 
Trade  Schools  had  not  been  published.  This  report 
is  so  adequate  descriptively,  and  as  a  departmental 
report  so  interpretative,  that  I  shall  not  restate  it  here. 
The  report  ought  to  go  into  the  hands  of  every  per¬ 
son  interested  in  trade  education  or  in  public  school 
problems.  It  reveals  not  only  facts  but  tendencies. 
It  is  not  like  so  many  reports,  a  defense  of  existing 
work  or  an  appeal  for  new  funds.  Its  author  appears 
to  have  been  more  interested  in  the  defects  and  blind- 
alley  problems  of  his  department  than  in  the  meritori¬ 
ous  features.  Among  his  statistical  results  is  a  con¬ 
demnation  of  the  system  of  compulsory  evening  school 
for  boys  between  14  and  16  years  of  age  who  have 
taken  out  working  papers.  His  tables  show  that  the 
best  attendance  is  the  voluntary.  The  compulsory  at¬ 
tendance  is  the  poorest,  the  most  wasteful,  the  most 
repugnant  to  the  people,  if  facts  can  be  taken  at  their 
face  value.  Trade  subjects  lead  all  others  in  the  stead¬ 
iness  with  which  they  hold  their  pupils  through  the 
school  year.  Cooperation  is  emphasized  as  the  fore¬ 
most  principle  to  establish  in  trade  school  work,  and 
the  report  implies,  though  it  does  not  enunciate,  the 
important  principle  that  our  factories  must  be  trans- 


formed  into  educational  institutions  rather  than  our 
public  schools  into  factory  auxiliaries.  The  correlative 
of  this  principle  is  basic  to  our  consideration  of  indus¬ 
trial  education,  and  it  is  that  industrial  education 
cannot  be  had  through  any  kind  of  vocational  or  trade 
specialization  in  our  public  schools.  The  New  York 
Trade  Schools  Report  equally  shows  that  the  trade 
instruction  given  in  the  New  York  public  schools  is 
a  virtually  negligible  part  of  the  city’s  total  industrial 
training.  A  great  quantity  of  industrial  education  is 
imported  annually  by  immigrants.  The  apprentice¬ 
ship  system,  or  its  analogy,  seems  to  persist  in  ways 
not  specified  and  scarcely  known,  and  most  of  the  tech¬ 
nical  facility  that  is  gained  by  producers  in  New  York 
City  is  gained  somewhere  else  than  in  any  kind  of 
educational  institution.  What  Tolstoi  called  “the  un¬ 
conscious  education”  appears  to  be  still,  in  New  York 
City,  the  important  and  indispensable  form  of  indus¬ 
trial  education. 

I  purposely  refrain  from  going  into  too  much  de¬ 
tail  about  Dr.  Shiels’  report,  in  the  hope  that  my 
hearers  will  send  to  New  York  for  a  copy  of  this 
report,  and  will  read  it  word  by  word. 

To  generalize  from  the  New  York  situation,  we 
may  state  certain  propositions  which  will  be  more  or 
less  evident  without  argument : 

(i)  Vocational  training  has  not  been  introduced 
in  New  York,  and  as  applying  to  the  elementary  and 
even  the  high  school,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  it  never 
will  be  introduced.  It  presupposes  the  absurdity  of 
thinking  to  discover  foreordained  vocations  for  young 
people.  It  presupposes  a  classification  of  the  popu¬ 
lation  along  hereditary  lines  according  to  trade.  When 
Columbus,  Ga.,  established  a  vocational  school  in  the 
cotton-mill  district  of  the  South,  among  youths  who 
were  in  fact  predestined  in  some  measure  to  mill  oc¬ 
cupations,  this  was  a  superficially  successful  experi¬ 
ment.  When  the  same  idea  was  transferred  to  Roch¬ 
ester,  a  composite  industrial  city,  it  failed  just  as  sig¬ 
nally,  although  the  school,  from  all  internal  observa¬ 
tion,  was  efficient  and  convincing.  Less  than  20  per 
cent,  of  the  students  whose  subsequent  careers  have 
been  traced,  have,  it  is  stated,  adhered  to  the  voca¬ 
tions  in  which  they  had  been  specialized  at  school. 


(2)  In  this  connection  it  might  be  pointed  out  that 
though  much  is  said  in  America  just  now  about  Ger¬ 
man  industrial  training,  and  about  the  continuation 
schools  of  Germany,  it  is  forgotten  by  many  people  that 
the  German  continuation  school  system  is  only  a  few 
years  old,  whereas  the  German  industrial  supremacy 
became  manifest  fully  25  years  ago.  Even  in  Ger¬ 
many,  a  nation  of  hereditary  classes,  it  was  not  con¬ 
tinuation  schools  and  not  vocation  schools  that  made 
German  education  industrially  efficient.  German  edu¬ 
cation  is  industrially  efficient  because  it  is  education¬ 
ally  efficient ;  because  it  has  been  worked  out  on  the 
civic  idea,  with  its  industrial  bearings,  and  has  defi¬ 
nitely  broken  from  the  old  scholastic  tradition  so  that 
it  deals  with  the  child  as  a  social  being  with  a  mental 
history  to  be  learned  through  genetic  psychology.  The 
scholastic  ideal  treats  the  child  as  an  isolated  indi¬ 
vidual  with  so-called  faculties  which  need  to  be  drilled 
in  order  that  they  may  become  strong;  scholastic  edu¬ 
cation  tries  to  force  on  the  adolescent  child  the  social 
habits  which  will  be  appropriate  only  after  he  becomes 
an  adult  in  a  competitive  community;  scholastic  edu¬ 
cation  aims  straight  at  the  so-called  intellectual  facul¬ 
ties,  allowing  the  athletic,  recreational  and  emotional 
interests  to  enter  only  if  they  contribute  to  immediate 
intellectual  betterment.  This  scholastic  education  dom¬ 
inates  in  America  at  this  day.  Germany  has  broken 
from  the  tradition  as  completely  as  it  has  broken  with 
some  other  kinds  of  feudalism,  while  we,  who  have 
forever  put  an  end  to  political  feudalism  and  who  are 
now  making  war  on  economic  feudalism,  are  still  bow¬ 
ing  to  the  feudal  tradition  in  education. 

(3)  While  the  important  industrial  education  must 
always  be  simply  fundamental  education,  an  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  relation  between  work  and  life — and  while 
New  York  City  faces  this  problem  as  its  true  prob¬ 
lem  of  industrial  training — it  is  still  true  that  trade 
education,  viewed  as  a  public  convenience  and  a  di¬ 
rective  agent  in  the  development  of  industrial  com¬ 
munities,  has  a  future.  Until  a  year  ago  the  trade 
schools  of  the  New  York  Board  of  Education,  with 
perhaps  one  exception,  were  simply  a  product  of  the 
demand  or  training  on  the  part  of  those  who  sought 
work  and  who  desired  to  enter  popular  trades.  In 
other  words,  these  schools  were  serving  as  feeders  to 


trades  already  in  large  part  over-supplied.  They  were 
not  serving  a  purpose  of  vocational  guidance  nor  were 
they  strengthening  the  community,  as  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  technical  efficiency,  at  the  points 
where  the  community  was  weak.  There  was  no  guid¬ 
ing  philosophy  in  the  development  of  trade  schools. 

For  a  year  past  the  intelligence  back  of  the  New 
York  Trade  Schools  has  worked  on  what  are  termed, 
in  Dr.  Shiels’  report,  two  fundamentally  valid  consid¬ 
erations  : 

“(i)  Whenever  there  is  a  demand  for  any  kind  of 
skilled  labor,  that  will  lift  the  worker  from  the  ranks 
of  the  less  skilled  or  unskilled,  and  that  will  restore 
the  equilibrium  between  the  insufficient  supply  of  labor 
that  is  well  paid  and  the  overcrowded  supply  of  labor 
that  is  underpaid,  such  a  demand  should  be  met  by 
opportunity  for  instruction. 

“(2)  Trades  which  are  overcrowded  and  underpaid 
should  not  be  introduced  into  a  scheme  of  trade  in¬ 
struction.” 

The  application  of  these  principles  requires  a  knowl¬ 
edge  of  local  trade  conditions  and  a  still  wider  knowl¬ 
edge  of  industrial  tendencies  in  broad  sections  of  the 
country.  Our  customs  tariff  has  been  long  used  as  a 
means  of  fostering,  in  various  parts  of  the  country, 
industrial  activities  which  are  essentially  noneconomic 
inasmuch  as  they  can  be  carried  on  in  such  places  only 
under  the  condition  that  a  government  bounty  be  be¬ 
stowed  on  them.  The  tariff  has  operated  also  to 
prevent  the  industrial  equilibriation  of  the  United 
States  with  other  countries.  This  does  not  involve 
a  condemnation  of  the  use  of  taxation  for  other  than 
revenue  purposes ;  but  when  the  insidious  power  of 
taxation  is  in  the  hands  of  unscientific  or  selfishly  in¬ 
terested  people,  it  can  do  more  to  enslave  a  country 
in  artificial  bonds  than  perhaps  any  other  agency. 

Our  development  of  the  trade  school  in  the  United 
States  has  partaken  of  this  same  error,  and  in  rectify¬ 
ing  this  error  and  making  our  trade  education  truly 
contributive  to  new  economic  industries  and  a  higher 
wage,  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  know  the  industrial 
facts  locally  and  territorially  and  to  recognize  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  the  existence  in  any  one  community  of  fun- 


i 


damentally  uneconomic  industries,  or  at  least  of  in¬ 
dustries  over-supplied  with  workers.  This  principle, 
relatively  new  even  in  the  field  of  thought,  can  scarcely 
be  applied  in  practice  because  the  data  do  not  exist, 
but  it  is  at  least  implied  in  New  York  City  in  the 
trade  school  report  from  which  I  am  quoting.  It 
means,  very  briefly,  that  trade  education  is  to  be  used 
as  a  directive  power  so  that  it  will  react  not  merely 
to  the  advantage  of  existing  manufacturing  interests, 
but  more  largely  to  the  advantage  of  the  employee 
and  of  the  community  as  such.  The  schoolman  who 
builds  and  administers  a  curriculum  according  to  this 
principle  must  be  an  economist  as  well  as  a  peda¬ 
gogue. 

(4)  If  New  York  City  is  to  build  up  a  system  of 
trade  and  continuation  teaching  in  any  degree  com¬ 
mensurate  with  the  industrial  hugeness  of  New  York, 
it  will  have  to  proceed  along  other  lines  than  those  of 
the  technicological  school  or  cloistered  institution. 
There  must  be  established  living  connections  between 
the  school  and  the  factory.  Processes  must  not  be 
given  to  the  student  to  illuminate  book  knowledge, 
but  book  knowledge  must  be  given  him  to  make  un¬ 
derstandable  the  actual  trade  processes  which  must  be 
made  the  basis  of  his  instruction.  The  school  must 
be  in  some  measure  moved  out  into  the  factory.  New 
York  has  done  nothing  quantitatively  along  this  line 
to  compare  with  experiments  abroad,  or  even  in  some 
other  American  cities,  but  New  York  has  adopted 
the  policy,  and  the  expansions  of  her  trade  schools 
have  been  planned  along  cooperative  lines. 

The  reasons  why  trade  education  must  become 
again  a  form  of  modified  apprenticeship  achieved 
through  a  cooperation  between  school  and  factory, 
are  two.  First,  any  other  method  will  be  crushingly 
expensive  to  the  taxpayers.  The  city  cannot  dupli¬ 
cate  the  mercantile  and  industrial  plants,  valued  at 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  which  alone  can  pro¬ 
vide  the  framework  for  comprehensive  trade  instruc¬ 
tion.  Second,  the  idea  of  educating  people  in  a  school 
in  order  that  they  may  become  efficient  workers  is 
in  itself  pedagogically  archaic.  Even  in  those  fields 
of  education  which  lie  outside  of  industry  we  cannot 
educate  for  life,  save  by  living,  and  in  modern  spe- 


cialized  industries  it  is  obvious  that  we  cannot  edu¬ 
cate  for  work  except  by  working. 

In  conclusion,  I  might  answer  the  vague  wonder 
which  some  may  be  feeling,  that  I  should  have  un¬ 
dertaken  to  talk  about  industrial  education  in  New 
York  at  all  and  then  have  discussed  exclusively  the 
hope  for  industrial  education  in  New  York.  It  would 
be  possible  to  make  a  fairly  impressive  list  of  indi¬ 
vidual  trade-teaching  institutions  inside  and  outside 
of  the  New  York  Board  of  Education,  but  this  would 
be  a  vicious  and  misleading  thing  to  do.  It  ought 
to  be  instructive — it  ought  to  bring  a  shock  of  sur¬ 
prise  and  a  challenge  to  thought — to  realize  that  Amer¬ 
ica  is  in  the  international  arena,  where  nothing  except 
industrial  supremacy  can  make  for  victory,  and  that 
the  greatest  industrial  center  of  America  has  an  edu¬ 
cational  system  built  on  antique  scholastic  lines  with 
nothing  more  than  a  few  shingles  and  streamers  of 
industrial  training  tacked  on  to  the  outside  of  this 
system ! 


